


Life Line, Heart Line

by cookinguptales



Category: The Final Girls (2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-08-24 09:35:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8367334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookinguptales/pseuds/cookinguptales
Summary: Looking back, Vicki realizes that she's spent much of her life alone. At least in death, she'll have a partner.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [youjik33](https://archiveofourown.org/users/youjik33/gifts).



> Dear youjik33, I hope you're having a very Happy Halloween! This is more of a character study mixed with some preslash, but I love the idea of where these two could go from here on, and I hope you do, too.

It was true, what they said, about your life flashing before your eyes before you die. It sounded stupid, like one of those goddamn cliches fed to kids, but there was a split second between realizing what had to be done and actually doing it, and in that second, Vicki saw everything. She looked down at her hand, grubby and cracked from the fight, and she remembered.

One, two, three, four, five fingers.

She remembered flashing Max a brief thumbs up right before a big exam. They’d meant to spend all night studying, but they’d just stayed up laughing and telling stupid stories instead. Still, that thumbs up had felt like a secret magical spell that only they could share, and somehow, against all odds, the two of them had pulled through.

She remembered pointing out boys when she walked with Max down the hallways, and only just barely remembering to tamp down the urge to point out girls in between. She could still see the way that Max had ducked her head and laughed. Max had never had time for boys back then, not when she was trying to hold down the fort where her mother couldn’t. In the end, Max hadn’t really had time for girls, either.

She remembered flashing some dumbass guy the middle finger when he’d made Max flush dark with embarrassment. It was over something stupid, something she couldn’t even remember. But she remembered the way that Max had rubbed at her cheeks with the heels of her hands, and the lingering heat she could feel there even after Max slipped her hand back into Vicki’s. She remembered the way her middle finger would itch to be used, years later, when Max went away.

She remembered staring down at her ring finger and wondering, wondering if there was anyone who would ever want to put a ring there. Max was gone, and in her place was a curious sort of void. It was like a piece of Vicki that she hadn’t even known wasn’t hers went with Max when she left, and the seams that had been broken were frayed and fraying and so, so fragile. She felt bare there, exposed. She felt like all the goodness was leaking out of her, and could feel jealousy and bile taking its place. She felt empty and full in all the worst ways, and she’d look in the mirror, think about what she’d done, and know deep in her heart that everyone would always leave.

She remembered her pinky, and Max’s, linked together when they were children. She remembered promising that they’d always, always be best friends. Children didn’t know much about time, or about death, or about the way that a friend could slowly but surely become a stranger. Children had no idea that helplessness could turn you monstrous.

She looked her hand, at all five fingers, and she remembered her life. She remembered the exact day that she’d realized that her hands were empty, and that Max would never hold them again. It had been the day that she’d seen her holding hands with Gertie.

Gertie, Gertie, Gertie, who always had a sly smile curving at her lips and a comeback that had teeth. Gertie, who saw that Max had a hole too, fraying edges and all, and moved to fill it. The two of them had joined, indivisible, to create a wall more than strong enough to keep Vicki out.

She was an enemy and a rival and right now, she was the only thing Vicki had.

Gertie, whose smile had always had a mischievous lilt to it that Vicki had always privately admired. Who had a backbone like steel, and who didn’t back down even when she was terrified. Gertie, who’d seemed so perfect once upon a time, too perfect, and who was now pinned just like Vicki was. Neither of them were perfect, and none of them were whole.

But they weren’t alone. Vicki’s hands were empty, but they were strong. She had her holes, but she was mighty despite them. So she used her hands the best way she knew how, and with one she damned and the other she comforted. She held tight to the rope, and tight to Gertie, and then she pulled.

* * *

It was dark where she was now, but not dark enough. She could see fluorescent light shining crimson through her eyelids, and she knew that she wasn’t at Camp Bloodbath anymore. It was disorienting in a way, because she smelled disinfectant instead of smoke and heard steady beeps instead of screams, but the sensation of warm skin on skin hadn’t changed. There was still a hand in hers, deceptively soft and strong and very newly familiar.

Vicki opened her eyes to see Gertie’s, big and brown and far too close. “You’re awake! You’re okay!” Vicki heard, the words slowly coalescing into meaning in her head, and she shut her eyes again.

“In a manner of speaking,” she mumbled. Old habits died hard.

“Oh shut up,” Gertie said, and shoved at her shoulder--then immediately shrank back. “Wait, shit, sorry. How are you feeling?”

“Tired,” Vicki said. Like the outer shell of her had been burned away, but instead of the new skin being soft, it was harder than ever.

“That wears off,” Gertie said. “Side effect of dying, I guess.”

Vicki’s brows knitted, and she opened her eyes again. “What happened?” she asked. Really, those should have been the first words out of her mouth.

Gertie shrugged at her, and Vicki was surprised to note just how _normal_ she looked. Her hair still had that slight curl to it, the bounce. It wasn’t heat-frizzed at all. She looked whole and healthy and beautiful, and she was smiling down at Vicki like they hadn’t spent their whole lives hating each other. “I dunno,” she said. “I guess Max must have done it, because we’re all here.”

“We’re all okay?” Vicki asked. How the hell could they be okay after a thing like that?

But Gertie just shrugged again. “More or less. We’re all alive, anyway.”

“Max…?”

Gertie gestured with her head instead of her hand, a movement that looked unnatural until Vicki realized that Gertie's hand was still warm on her own. “Over there. She’s still asleep, but the nurses say she should be okay.”

Vicki closed her eyes and sighed. “Thank god.”

“Yeah,” Gertie said, then nudged her chair a little closer to the bed that Vicki was just starting to get the shape of. “And look…”

“Mm?”

“Before you wake up all the way and bite my head off--”

Vicki snorted in a way she never would have in front of Chris.

“I just wanna say… Thanks. For what you did back there. It sucks that both of us had to die, but it sucked less not being alone.”

Gertie sounded uncharacteristically shy now, and Vicki opened one eye to see just what that girl looked like when she was bashful. Shit. Just as cute as she’d feared. “Don’t mention it.” She paused. “Seriously, ever.”

To her surprise, Gertie just laughed. “Yeah, that’s the megabitch we all know and love,” she said, and Vicki was fairly certain that she’d never heard the word ‘bitch’ said with such fondness before.

“Whatever,” Vicki said, and started to feel some of the feeling come back into her limbs as she shifted beneath the sheets. “I guess it was nice being there with you, too. Back there. Sort of.”

“Why, Miss Summers,” Gertie drawled, putting her free hand to her chest theatrically. “That’s the nicest thing I’ve ever heard you say to me.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Vicki said, and settled back into her pillow. “Don’t get used to it.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Gertie said, but she didn’t take back her hand.

Vicki, though she knew she’d deny it under pain of death later, didn’t pull back either. Instead she just held on a little tighter, felt that soft, soft skin against hers, and marveled at the sensation. When she looked down at her hands, she still remembered. But their lives hadn’t ended back there in that cabin, and her hands weren’t done yet. Not by a long shot. And this time, they wouldn’t be empty.


End file.
